In 2002, the intelligence agencies completed a report on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in less time. Mr. Bush also made selected passages of that report public to buttress his arguments for war with Iraq, most of which proved to be based on fairy tales.

Then, Mr. Bush wanted Americans to focus on how dangerous Saddam Hussein was, and not on the obvious consequences of starting a war in the Middle East. Now, he wants voters to focus on how dangerous the world is, and not on his utter lack of ideas for what to do about it.

The ball is in the White House's court. Bush can whine all he wants about playing politics, while he plays the game himself, but in the end he's the one holding all the cards. No one else gets to see the whole reports that he generally chooses to ignore, except for the parts that fit his agenda.

In any event, the time for blame is past. It's time to seek solutions and a national consensus on how to fix this mess. If our president truly cared about this country over his own political skin, he would lay the whole deck on the table instead of slipping all the aces up his sleeve -- again.

Basil, thanks for dropping by the blog and for the link at yours. I do know that Bush won't run again but there is the legacy thing. He doesn't want to be remembered as the president who dragged his party out of power on account of his own unpopularity.

Lester, on a another note, I tried to leave a comment at the Gay Patriot on that thread. It went into moderation and he never posted it. Kind of makes my point, that partisanship has replaced ideology altogether in the political discourse.